


in spring, a branch

by brella



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: F/F, Flowers, Friends to Lovers, POV Female Character, Post-Canon, Reunions, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2020-01-06 23:45:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18398789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/brella
Summary: “I thought you didn’t even like flowers!” Yui is babbling when Kiyoko comes back to herself halfway. “Well, of course you like flowers; who doesn’t like flowers; but this is kind of far from where you live, isn’t it, and don’t you have a bunch of studying to do, unless you’re already ahead on all of it; you probably are; you’re so smart—isn’t this place pretty?”“Yes,” Kiyoko breathes, still staring at Yui.A couple of years down the line, Shimizu and Michimiya find each other beneath the flowers.





	in spring, a branch

**Author's Note:**

> I love these two. :')

Wisteria is not Kiyoko’s favorite. She has always been more partial to the chrysanthemum, in its crisp autumnal grace; certainly flowers are not pragmatic by their nature, but Kiyoko has always been drawn to things that are strong in quiet ways, that find their beauty in austerity. Wisteria, while popular, is a bit ostentatious, in Kiyoko’s opinion.

Nonetheless, Tamae-san, who sits beside her in her Thursday Advanced Business lecture, tells her that if she is truly going to experience spring in Tokyo, she has to go to Kameido Tenjin.

“It’ll make even you fall for wisteria,” she says with a mischievous laugh that crinkles her face, and Kiyoko sort of feels like she’s being teased.

“I don’t _dislike_ wisteria,” she replies, drawing a box in blue highlighter around a fragment of her notes. “I really have no opinion.”

Tamae-san wrinkles her freckled nose again. “Let romance into your heart, Kiyoko.”

Kiyoko will not let romance into her heart. She is too busy. Her time has to be divided evenly among studying, attending classes, tidying her apartment in Bunkyo, making bento for the week, working at the bookstore in Jimbocho, volunteer coaching a youth girls’ volleyball team in Aoyama, and, occasionally, sleeping.

 _Nothing less from the unstoppable Shimizu (-ω-_ ゞ, Sugawara texts her when she explains that this combination of things will prevent her from meeting him, Azumane, and Sawamura for yakitori one Friday night.

In a separate message, Azumane writes, _Please remember to take care of yourself_.

Kiyoko accepts the sentiment hesitantly, without any promises, as she always does—enough to be polite, but not enough to take it to heart. The methods and means for “taking care of oneself,” the world’s most well-intentioned but nebulous command, have always eluded her, but thus far she has managed just fine without them.

“Seriously,” Tamae-chan tells her on a drizzly April morning, one hand gripping Kiyoko’s shoulder to keep her from escaping, “Kameido Tenjin. This weekend. My friend said the flowers are in full bloom. _Go_.”

So Kiyoko checks her calendar. By chance, between the yellow block for “laundry” and the purple block for “studying” on Sunday, there is an unencumbered space, spanning from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM. She looks up how long the train ride will be—just under forty minutes each way, with minimal transfers. She consults her weather app: light rain forecasted, not hard enough to deter her, but not clear enough to invite a great deal of foot traffic.

Kiyoko does not consider herself a believer in fate, but this arrangement of circumstances seems like the closest substitute. Come Saturday evening, she packs herself a light lunch of pickled plum onigiri and a thermos of miso soup in her favorite travel set, the pale pink one with the sakura blossom pattern, which Hitoka had given her as a graduation gift.

She feels a tender smile overtake her face in the dim light of her apartment, crouched in front of the open fridge and running her thumb along the tiny, symmetrical flowers. She will have to send Hitoka a photo, to proudly display the set being used. It has always brought her such happiness to know that she has done something helpful.

 

* * *

 

Kiyoko wears her favorite fluffy white scarf and lavender peacoat, carrying her tote bag securely on one shoulder. She strides to the train station with purpose, carefully reading the train and walking directions she had printed out the night before.

Sugawara had always teased her about this habit— _you have a smartphone, Shimizu, so why not just use your GPS_ —but Sugawara had never seemed to care that paper does not have batteries and thus cannot die on you in an emergency (as Kageyama’s or Hinata’s or Tanaka’s or Nishinoya’s smartphones had, countless times, prompting many desperate payphone calls to her), and so Kiyoko had not taken these comments very seriously.

It isn’t a long trip. The trains are a bit crowded, but not too. Kiyoko stands by the back doors and composes her grocery list as she watches the Kanda River flow by. Lemons, daikon, tuna, air freshener, batteries, a green highlighter. New rubber gloves for cleaning. Maybe an A4 notebook? She’ll be needing another for her Wednesday lecture—Masa-sensei is an excellent professor, but she always has quite a lot to say about anatomy.

She used to take the train to Karasuno High every morning, just as the sun was rising, or in the dark if it was winter. She would often use the time to finalize her managerial notes, to touch up her diagrams, to review whatever budgetary spreadsheets she had printed. Their little mountain town had risen sleepily around her, blinds opening, voices gathering; Kiyoko had been only halfway aware of it most of the time, preoccupied with assembling instructions for flight. Quietly determined to ensure that the team would endure. Sprinting, in her own way, for the hurdle.

For a moment, she finds herself in that empty morning train again: seated at the back of the car near the window, tucking her hair behind her ear and translating love and pride into lines on charts. She feels a smile take shape at the edge of her mouth, remembering. She had never done anything quite as wholeheartedly as that, in precisely the way the word was built, _whole heart_ ; but then, the company had left her little alternative.

Azumane’s words return. _Please remember to take care of yourself_.

 _Well, Azumane_ , she composes back in her head as her train pulls in and the doors open onto the platform, _you’ll be pleased to know that today, I am going to look at flowers_.  

 

* * *

 

Kameido Tenjin is nestled among the modern suburban apartment buildings of outer Tokyo, hidden so expertly that Kiyoko might never have known it was there. As the morning’s weather had been so unfavorable, there are not many other people strolling up the path. When Kiyoko passes through the gate, she finds herself in a courtyard with a wide green pond over which a grand scarlet bridge arches.

And beside the pond—

Kiyoko stops in her tracks, fingers incrementally slackening their grip on the strap of her bag, forgetting to grip it altogether. Forgetting even to breathe.

Across a network of bamboo pergolas, a forest of wisteria cascades down as if welcoming her into a tale of magic beyond time—delicate layers of white and lavender blue and, for the most mature blossoms, a deep, impossible violet. The faint breeze ambling through the shrine makes them whisper among themselves, hushed and elusive, and their reflections waver when a crane’s landing sets ripples across the surface of the pond. Their springtime fragrance is sweet and dreamlike. Kiyoko breathes it in only for a second, afraid to take too much.

She walks forward unconsciously, craning her neck to keep her eyes on the flowers as she passes beneath the trellises. In the distance she hears students praying to pass their exams, the clatter of the old bell echoing through the courtyard.

She stops at the edge of the walkway to linger, making sure she won’t be in anyone’s way.

Ostentatious indeed, but… she closes her mouth, not having noticed that it had fallen open.

She’ll have to thank Tamae-san.

“Eh?! No way! Sh- _Shimizu_?!”

Kiyoko blinks at the sound of her name, looking around. That voice—it can’t be—

“Over here!”

Her head turns by chance, but beneath the veil of the wisteria it feels like one deliberate motion. At the crest of the bridge, waving energetically down at her with one toned arm, wearing chin-length hair and a joyful, resplendent smile that confidently snatches Kiyoko’s breath from her chest, is—

“Yui,” she whispers.

Yui disappears from view and races down the bridge to where Kiyoko is standing, almost as though she had been waiting up there this entire time just to see her.

 

* * *

 

“Morning, Shimizu!”

Kiyoko delayed in lifting her head at the greeting, hoping that whoever spoke it would forgive the rudeness. It was just that if her concentration were to break, she would lose the end of the thought she was transcribing on how the club budget could accommodate an intensive autumn training camp when it already had a bit of a dent from the summer one.

She glanced up only when she was finished, a customary apology assembling itself on her tongue, but fallen silent at the sight of Yui’s flushed face grinning back at her.

“Michi—Yui?” she said, a little inelegantly. Though Yui had made it clear many times that her preference was for Kiyoko to address her by her first name, she was still growing accustomed to the sound of it. “Good morning. Don’t you usually...?”

Yui put on a horrible grimace, dropping her arms from the straps of her backpack to let them hang limp at her sides. “My bike broke! Can you believe that? With only, what, five weeks left in the semester? It’s just so—so—ugh!”

Kiyoko felt a comfortable warmth bloom in her chest without much prompting. It manifested as a smile.

“But hey, taking the train is pretty great!” Yui went on, settling into the seat opposite Kiyoko’s. “Getting to look at the scenery and all—I’ve never really paid attention to it before. It’s pretty! You ride the train every day, right, Shimizu?”

Kiyoko nodded. She had never paid attention to the scenery before, either, but she felt like saying so would ruin something.

“I do miss my bike, though,” Yui moaned, head drooping. “I can already feel my quads slacking off.” She clenched both of her fists, eyes ablaze. “I’ll just have to give them double the work when I get it fixed!”

Kiyoko found herself grappling with a sudden, inescapable ache at the knowledge that she had missed Yui’s final match of high school. All of them had.

She wished, seeing Yui beam at her, hands gripping the edge of her seat at either side of her knees, that she could have watched how Yui had played; that she could have indexed each arduous movement, swept up in the thrill of it.

She saw vestiges of that thrill in Yui’s eyes even then, as the silver morning light pooled in them through the window of the train.

“What are you working on?” Yui asked, and it was only then that Kiyoko had realized that she hadn’t even been responding, and felt a little bad about it. Yui leaned forward with cheerful interest, scanning the pages in Kiyoko’s lap. “Club stuff?”

“Mm,” Kiyoko replied. “I want to see if I can get us—well,” she faltered, remembering that in a few months’ time, she would no longer be part of that impossible whole, “them—to another training camp. It will be hard to accomplish, but since we won Nationals, they’ve given us a bit more of a budget for next year.”

“Next year…” Yui mused, settling back into her seat. Her eyes drifted to the window and softened with longing. “It always sounds so far away when you say it out loud, but when you’re actually living it, it comes so fast.”

Kiyoko’s heart pinched with that same nameless longing. She lowered her pencil, but rather than looking out the window, she looked at Yui.

“It does,” she said. “But I want to be sure…”

 _That they’re taken care of_.

“It’s good that you found Hitoka,” Yui said with a quiet sigh. “It kind of gives me a little peace of mind, at least. Knowing that they won’t be eating the next manager alive. Sawamura did a really good job of making sure they never skipped... I hope they keep it up.”

Kiyoko thought of steadfast, up-and-coming captain Ennoshita, and was so certain that they would that she almost laughed.

Yui sighed again, this one fuller, its weight more significant. “I got a volleyball scholarship to Kaetsu.”

“That’s,” Kiyoko was unable to conjure a sufficient word, “amazing. Congratulations.”

“If I work really hard, I can maybe be a regular,” Yui said, still focused on the clouds, “and then captain, and then—and then—better.” She swallowed. “A better captain than I was, here.”

“Yui,” Kiyoko murmured. She did not need to think about it that time.

Then Yui lifted both hands to her own face and slapped them onto her cheeks. Though the display was habitual, it still made Kiyoko jump.

Yui recovered, cheeks stung and red from the impact, and took a long, settling breath. Kiyoko only stared at her, wide-eyed.

“Sorry,” she said to Kiyoko at last, ducking her head and fiddling bashfully with her skirt. “I told myself I wouldn’t mope. I may not have done all that I should have, but—”

“It’s not easy work.”

Yui lifted her eyes to Kiyoko’s. “Huh?”

“Being captain,” Kiyoko said. “It’s not easy work. There’s more room for mistakes there than there is in any position on the court—maybe even in being a coach. Knowing how to guide people, to teach them how to drive their own improvement, to let them rely on you while still pushing them to stand on their own…”

She ducked her eyes, thinking of Daichi, how he made it look so effortless and so, so grueling. “To me, it sounds impossible. But…”

Her eloquence floundered, then, if it had ever been there to begin with. She watched the blue lines on her binder paper page instead of Yui, comforted by the even spaces between, so full of both rigor and promise.

“You won matches,” she said at last, “and you lost matches. To win every match you played would only mean you weren’t fighting anyone worthwhile. You were a good captain, Yui. Sometimes, being a good captain means teaching them how to lose.”

Yui did not say anything for a while. Kiyoko feared that she had been too forward, too presumptuous, too—something. Too, too, too. The train came to their stop, slowing smoothly to a halt, and then she had no choice but to look up and evaluate what she had done.

“Shimizu,” Yui said, with tears glistening in her eyes and an admiring smile adorning her round, healthy face, “you’re the coolest person I know.”

Kiyoko packed those words carefully in her hands, as she did the rice on Saturday mornings in the cold light of the kitchen, and made a place for them inside of her, to guard and covet them forever.

She had been in trouble, then, such trouble that the best thing she could do was run from it (a talent that, despite her best efforts, she had never unlearned). But before she ran, before graduation, before her last autumn training camp, she found herself yearning to reach across the distance between their knees, wishing for that train ride with Yui to go on forever.

 

* * *

 

“I can’t believe it,” Yui exclaims for perhaps the fifth time. “I just can’t believe it! You look so—so— _so_ —”

She makes a high-pitched noise, clutching her face. “You know!”

Kiyoko doesn’t, but she isn’t about to say so. She’s not sure she could say much of anything even if she wanted to, so taken is she with the sight of Yui, who has grown her hair out into a messy bob and tied some of it back into a brisk stub of a ponytail; Yui, who has, impossibly, gotten somehow _taller_ , or maybe it just feels that way; Yui, in her hoodie and her denim jacket and her jeans and her magenta Asics and her pale yellow scarf, the one Kiyoko had given her for her birthday three years ago, which looks as though it’s in need of mending from overwear.

Kiyoko is operating below capacity. Utterly spellbound by it all. The sumptuous colors of the wisteria, like something from a climactic romance scene in a drama, are not helping matters.

“I thought you didn’t even like flowers!” Yui is babbling when Kiyoko comes back to herself halfway. “Well, of course you like flowers; who doesn’t like flowers; but this is kind of far from where you live, isn’t it, and don’t you have a bunch of studying to do, unless you’re already ahead on all of it; you probably are; you’re so smart—isn’t this place pretty?”

“Yes,” Kiyoko breathes, still staring at Yui.

“This is my first time coming here,” Yui says. Her smile has not abated for even an instant. _Is she really that happy to see her?_ “I mean, I’ve seen pictures, and stuff—you know this place is dedicated to Sugawara no Michizane? That made me think of, well, _our_ Suga! Your hair’s so long—” She reaches out as if to touch it and then turns beet red, hand darting back. “Um, anyway. Are you here to say a prayer for something?”

Kiyoko has never put much stock in gods. This is something everyone close to her knows. Azumane and Daichi and Sugawara would always get so worked up about saying the proper number of prayers before a match, marching to the shrine in snow or rain or crippling summer heat. As if the gods’ will held any sway over their own abilities or their own resolve. Kiyoko would go with them, always, but she still remembers what she had said before Nationals: _It’s going to be all right. Gods or no gods._

For this reason, it seems like a silly question for Yui to be asking, for Yui knows her as well as anyone—better than anyone, perhaps, after three years and hours of late-night texts and an intermittent correspondence since beginning university—but Kiyoko senses the intent behind the subterfuge without much effort. What Yui really means is _why you, why here, how, how_.

“A classmate told me I couldn’t miss it,” Kiyoko says. “The wisteria, I mean. She insisted it, really. I had the day free, so…”

“So adventurous!” Yui exclaims teasingly, punching Kiyoko lightly in the arm and then looking immediately apologetic, as though she’d done it on pure instinct. “Well, I’ve got a match coming up, and since Suga himself can’t give me good luck, I figured I’d try for the next best thing.”

“A match? When?”

“Tomorrow,” Yui says, and winces. “It’s not a super big deal, just a qualifier... but I’m still super nervous. It’s the first match we’ve played since I made regular—”

 _Regular_. Kiyoko eases into a smile.

“Congratulations,” she murmurs.

Yui’s cheeks color with pleasure. “W-Well, it’s whatever; it’s not really—oh, who am I kidding! It’s the coolest! The third years are on a whole other level! Our ace, Oe-senpai; she’s—” She shivers with delight. “ _Amazing_! Ah!” She gasps dramatically, reaching out to grab both of Kiyoko’s hands. “Would you come watch? If you have time?”

Kiyoko answers in a heartbeat, “Of course.” She doesn’t even think to check her calendar.

“Yay!” Yui bounces, and Kiyoko’s hands bounce with her. “Oh, man, I’m so excited; I really…”

She trails off, as if hoping that the sentiment will complete itself without her assistance. Her lips are chapped from the wind. Kiyoko remembers how often she’d have to remind her to wear chapstick in high school, wonders if it would be appropriate to do so now.

“I missed you, Shimizu,” Yui says at last, with a little giggle at the end, like she’s surprised at herself.

Beyond Yui’s face, Kiyoko can see the bowed branches of the wisteria. She can hear a family laughing just beyond, their prayers for happiness sent to be appraised. She can smell the rain coming. She can smell the rain.

“I missed you, too,” she says, realizing only as the words leave her how very true they are.

 

* * *

 

 _Go_.

Kiyoko’s soul roars the word, blazing and insistent, as it hasn’t in a long while. She doesn’t dare blink, doesn’t dare breathe.

The setter sends the ball to Yui. An effortless arc, an elegant precision, reaching its zenith at the spot where her palm will be before it’s even there. It reminds Kiyoko of someone.

Yui leaps for it and Kiyoko’s heart surges in her wake. When the spike connects, she lets out a cry of exertion, and it cuts sharply through the tense silence of the gym.

The ball slams onto the other team’s court, unstopped and unstoppable.

The point wins them the set.

The set wins them the match.

Yui’s teammates embrace her, ruffle her hair, praise her. Yui is crying. She lifts her chin, sweat glistening on her throat, and meets Kiyoko’s eyes instantly, without even having to search for them.

Kiyoko curls her fingers into a fist. Lifts that fist. And pumps it down in triumph.

“All right,” she whispers.

Yui flashes her a peace sign with one hand and scrubs the tears from her splotchy face with the other. Kiyoko watches them line up. She thinks of the wisteria, and the enchanting dream it had seemed to herald, like a story, like a song. She thinks of turning the lights on in the Karasuno gymnasium, and of watching the dark building transform. She thinks of Yui on the train, swearing to be better.

“All right,” she repeats. When they all bow and thank the stands for their support, Yui’s voice is the loudest, calling out to her.

 

* * *

 

“Ah! Look, look! Shimizu-sensei brought her girlfriend!”

It’s Chisaka Rinko, junior high first-year, wing spiker, who says it: delightedly, suddenly, and really quite loudly. It causes the gymnasium in Aoyama to erupt into giggles and Yui’s face to erupt into a blush.

“It’s not polite to shout about other people’s business, Chisaka,” Coach Ihara hisses. She’s nearly sixty, wears pink glasses, and is barely taller than half of the girls on the team, but her scolding immediately causes them all to shrink. “I’m surprised at you. Apologize immediately.”

“Sorry, Shimizu-sensei,” Rinko mumbles to the floor, running a self-conscious hand through her pixie-cut hair.

Kiyoko smiles kindly at her as she zips up her jersey. “It’s all right. Everyone, I’d like you to meet my friend Michimiya-san. She’ll be helping us with practice today.”

A chorus of approving cries follows that— _she’s pretty_ and _she must be really good at volleyball_ and _waaaah,_ _nee-san is so tall!_ —and Yui’s blush deepens even further.

“Michimiya Yui!” she introduces herself with a salute. “Nice to meet you all! Thank you for having me!”

Kiyoko stifles a fond laugh behind her hand. Such blazing enthusiasm. What a relief.

Yui holds herself back, at first, but within twenty minutes of rallying with the girls she is right back to her confident self, dispensing praise and advice in equal measure, so deftly that they are almost indistinguishable. Kiyoko watches from the edge of the court, clipboard and pencil in hand, hair in her favorite scrunchie, smiling.

She had scarcely finished speaking the invitation to join in on a practice before Yui had said yes, with such vigor and excitement that it had seemed fit to bowl Kiyoko backwards. It has been a month or so since Kameido Tenjin. The wisteria are no longer in bloom. But Kiyoko goes back, from time to time, to ask for blessings, to watch the turtles—to cross the bridge with Yui before they go to a dessert café and talk, for hours and hours.  

“Please come back soon,” the team implores Yui in unison when they’re cleaning up, long after it’s gotten dark.

“You’re so cool, Michimiya-sensei!” gushes Sakaguchi Akane, junior high second-year, middle blocker. “I want to play just like you!”

“Plus you make Shimizu-sensei way nicer,” Rinko adds, which earns her an elbow to the ribs from Tamura Mamiko, junior high first-year, libero. “Ow!”

“Shimizu-sensei is always nice,” Yui says. She winks cheerfully at Kiyoko, striding to the supply closet with the net bunched in her arms.

Kiyoko says with a completely neutral face, “That’s true.”

The air outside is balmy as they walk to the train station, and some of the scattered summer stars are visible even through the light pollution. A fragment of Ursa Minor, nearly forgotten. Beside her, Yui is humming a song out of key.

“See you next week?” Yui asks, clasping her hands imploringly as though she has to do any work at all to convince Kiyoko to invite her back to practice.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Kiyoko replies.

“I would never, ever mind,” Yui says emphatically. “They’re all super cute. And, like, _really_ good. They’re lucky to have you.”

As a car passes by them, headlights briefly gilding the ends of Yui’s dark hair, Kiyoko muses, for a moment, on luck.

Yui’s lips are as chapped as ever, pressed gently against Kiyoko’s. Kiyoko finds herself having to stand on her toes, just the tiniest bit. When she pulls back, Yui lifts her fingers to her mouth, as if to capture the sensation that Kiyoko has just taken from her, and blurts out a laugh.

“That was smooth, Shimizu,” she says giddily.

“Mm,” Kiyoko replies. “You know you don’t have to call me that anymore. We’ve known each other long enough.”

“Wah! Are you saying what I think you’re saying?!” Yui sounds ecstatic, eyes aglimmer. “I can really—I mean—”

“Give it a try,” Kiyoko tells her, shifting the weight of her duffel bag.

Yui takes a deep breath, so that it puffs her cheeks, and blows it out again, like she does before a spike.

Then, with a firm, decisive nod, she says, “Kiyoko.”

It settles into the summer night, as devoted as the stars they can hardly see. Without thinking, Kiyoko covers her mouth and chuckles.

Yui blushes, hiding her face with both hands and muffling a squeal in her palms. “I can’t believe it!”

“Can’t believe what?”

“Everything!” Yui exclaims. “I mean—it’s just so—you know?”

Kiyoko has always known, though not everyone who hears Yui grow so overwhelmed by her feelings as to lose the faculties to articulate them does.

She knows exactly what it is. She feels it, too.

“Next week,” she says to Yui, brisk and businesslike but permitting a note of affection. “I’ll look forward to it.”

Yui beams brilliantly at her. “Me, too.”

Kiyoko tamps down the want to touch her lips to Yui’s again, with a little more conviction this time, for a little while longer. She waits with Yui on the platform until the train to Yui’s neighborhood pulls in, its golden beams striking through the night.

“Tell everyone I said hi,” Yui says before the doors close. “Azumane, Suga, Sawamura. You know.”

Kiyoko welcomes the suggestion, but knows that she will have a great deal more to tell them. The thought of their reactions nearly has her muffling a laugh.

“I will,” she promises.

The doors slide closed, meeting each other in front of Yui’s shoulder. Through the glass, Yui waves to her, smiling the same way she had when her bike had broken and it had changed Kiyoko so gently that she had hardly noticed. On that sleepy morning, she had not been able to identify the tenderness shaping that smile, had not even known to look for it.

Now, she thinks she can.

As the train moves along the tracks and Kiyoko’s approaches in its wake, she thinks, impossibly, that maybe a vestige of it had always been there—as patient as Tokyo at the end of a long winter, awaiting the arrival of spring.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for the [Haikyuu!! WLW Zine](hqwlwzine.tumblr.com) in December of 2018.


End file.
